They have 800M weekly active users that have yet to be monetized but enormous capital costs. It makes sense they'd be looking to raise large amounts of money in an IPO.
A capital investment is predicated on there being future profits. I don't understand why they can't be profitable already. If 800M AU is not a critical mass for flipping on the revenue switch, I can't imagine what is.
So what stops them from monetizing those users today? Why would it be any different in the future if they can't?
I say further limit the free tier and more aggressively push those free users to a paid plan. Raise the prices for Business users and API access. An IPO isn't going to raise the trillion they need to keep running off capital.
Once OpenAI reaches the eventual pricing needed to break even, I suspect we'll see that it no longer makes sense for many of their customers to replace humans with AI after all. As it stands now, their investors are essentially paying OpenAI to put employees of other businesses out of jobs by masking the true costs. The sooner they can reach the sustainable pricing phase the better.
Everyone. People are becoming dependent on chatgpt. They literally cannot function professionally or even socially without it. They will pay their last 20-30 dollars if needed. It's literally like a drug especially when it's asking you if you want to followup/continue.
randerson|4 months ago
So what stops them from monetizing those users today? Why would it be any different in the future if they can't?
I say further limit the free tier and more aggressively push those free users to a paid plan. Raise the prices for Business users and API access. An IPO isn't going to raise the trillion they need to keep running off capital.
Once OpenAI reaches the eventual pricing needed to break even, I suspect we'll see that it no longer makes sense for many of their customers to replace humans with AI after all. As it stands now, their investors are essentially paying OpenAI to put employees of other businesses out of jobs by masking the true costs. The sooner they can reach the sustainable pricing phase the better.
arnaudsm|4 months ago
FinnKuhn|4 months ago
API usage on the other hand has a clear path to monetization and as of right now Anthropic is looking a lot better than OpenAI there.
deepdarkforest|4 months ago
AdamN|4 months ago
lm28469|4 months ago
LLMs have been commodified... Why would I pay for chatgpt when I can rotate free accounts on all providers and essentially never run out of tokens?